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“Basically my philosophy is Austrian School economics” – at 21:12 in this interview between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rupert Lowe. How refreshing to see a media interview in which neither participant is an idiot. What do we think? Is there hope for Britain? April 25th, 2026 | 2 comments
 I will start by saying that there is no doubt whatsoever that Jeffrey Epstein carried out multiple sex offences against children. He was justly convicted in 2019, and should have been brought to justice earlier than he was. But I was disturbed by one aspect of the way this story about Epstein that appears on the BBC website was reported: Epstein housed abuse victims in London flats, BBC reveals
The thing that disturbed me about the BBC’s reporting was the uncritical way in which these adult women were described as “victims” and the way that their claim to have been coerced was reported as absolute fact. Why should that disturb me? Not because I think that Epstein was incapable of such a crime: we know he was a twice-convicted sexual predator. I also know that sexual coercion can be combined with lavish gifts and a luxurious prison. And I utterly reject the barbaric belief that sexual coercion “does not count” if the victim had previously agreed to sex, including sex that was paid for. Allegations of this type of crime must be taken seriously. As I have said many times, “taken seriously” means “carefully investigated”, not “automatically believed”. A pity my first reaction upon reading this story was to laugh. Related posts: Believe or disbelieve individuals, not whole groups – about Neil Gaiman. The feminist movement denies rape victims justice If you don’t care whether a rape really happened, you don’t care about rape April 24th, 2026 | 11 comments
What it has contrived to be is this: a place of extraordinary, almost accidental richness. The common law, grown from below like something organic, from precedent and custom and the quiet accumulation of ordinary cases, the idea that law is not handed down from above by sovereign will but earned, argued, tested, revised. Parliamentary democracy, which we invented and then spent several centuries apologising for exporting. This language, this mongrel, scavenging, irresistible language that has borrowed from everyone and been diminished by no one, that can be the King James Bible in one register and the Shipping Forecast in another, and both are beautiful, and both are unmistakeably themselves. The music. The painting. The literature. Turner’s light, Elgar’s longing, the particular English melancholy that is not quite despair because it knows, somewhere, that the lark will rise again above the hill. – Gawain Towler waxes lyrical on St. George’s Day
April 23rd, 2026 | 14 comments
I’ve said before that the belief authoritarian politics is popular rests heavily on issue-based polling, filtered through a professional class reacting against the provincial, small-c conservatism of their childhood. This has causality backwards, the curtain-twitcher is mocked because busybody enforcement offends British social instinct. The nosy neighbour survives as a figure of comedy precisely because such behaviour is aberrant. British manners default to mind your own business: people do not discuss their salary, do not trumpet credentials, and do not boast, because doing so is considered gauche and intrusive. Most contemporary prohibitions (speech codes, licensing creep, online safety rules, public-health) are not therefore demanded by the masses banging pots and pans for more regulation. Reform UK has mostly avoided authoritarian posturing so far. Euroscepticism was inherently libertarian, which is why UKIP attracted voters who valued “boozy, defensive liberty.” Some worried Tory defectors might import paternalism, so it matters that Reform draws a clear line: there’s a difference between performative power-worship and simply expecting crime to be punished and public order maintained. Reform policymakers should recognise that this is a rare political window. Unpopular authoritarian measures are increasingly being associated in the public’s mind with Keir Starmer himself, and opportunities like that do not come along often. If there is ever a moment to argue for rolling back the frontiers of the state, whether on speed limits, smoking restrictions, firearms licensing, or freedom of speech, it is when public frustration and moral indignation are already doing half the work for you. April 22nd, 2026 | 14 comments
The Iranian Islamic Republic’s strategy is obvious: simply remain in power by gunning down or hanging any internal opposition, and inflict as much global economic damage as possible to increase pressure on the USA and Israel until Trump lives up to his TACO nickname. The USA strategy is rather less obvious as pretty much any result that leave Iran as a hostile Islamic Republic is an Iranian political win even if their military capabilities are degraded. April 21st, 2026 | 38 comments
The media’s fixation on Epstein, sordid though the Epstein story indisputably is, has performed a remarkable public service for those who would prefer the harder questions to go unasked. We are so busy being appalled by the dead paedophile that we have forgotten to be appalled by what the living intelligence services were actually worried about: that Britain sent to its most sensitive diplomatic post a man with deep, documented, inadequately severed financial ties to both Peking and Moscow. That is the scandal. Not the gossip. The geopolitics. I note as I write this that some in the media are finally looking into this aspect. But let’s focus on Nathan Gill and Epstein. April 21st, 2026 | 5 comments
Offshore wind provides the bulk of electricity generation under the CfD scheme. Even with today’s elevated gas prices, the reference prices in March 2026 (£77/MWh) were much lower than the current strike prices of projects awarded contracts in AR6 (£88/MWh) and AR7 (£97/MWh). Onshore wind strike prices are slightly lower and those for solar much lower. But these projects produce trivial amounts of electricity compared to offshore wind, so we can expect subsidies to keep rising and bills to go ever higher. Labour’s announcement that it will scrap the Carbon Price Support mechanism in April 2028 is a welcome, if tardy, intervention that will reduce wholesale electricity prices and hence reference prices. However, this means that CfD-funded generators will simply collect more of their revenue from subsidies rather than the market. Conclusions Even with elevated gas prices, CfD subsidies are soaring and the outlook is that Miliband’s AR6 and AR7 auctions are going to send bills even higher. This has not stopped Ember putting out another shonky report that tortures the data to produce the result they want. It should be obvious, even to them, if subsidies are being paid to renewables then they are more expensive than gas. With this level of desperation from Ember, we really must be witnessing the dying embers of Net Zero propaganda. April 20th, 2026 | 9 comments
Wat Tyler’s men in 1381 marched on London to demand the abolition of serfdom and the repeal of the poll tax. They did not want revolution; they wanted the king to be good. The Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 was 30,000 northerners marching under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ to protest Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries – it was not a rebellion against the Crown but a petition to it, in arms, to reconsider. The Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 involved Cornish and Devon men refusing the new Protestant liturgy, and dying in considerable numbers for the right to pray as their fathers had. The Covenanters of Scotland fought not for novelty but for a particular understanding of the proper ordering of church and state. The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685 was a Protestant constitutional protest dressed as a dynastic claim. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, that driest and most English of upheavals, resulted not in a republic but in a constitutional settlement – William III was invited in from the Netherlands not to overthrow the monarchy but to regularise it, to make parliament sovereign without making it supreme over everything that mattered to ordinary people. Each of these movements sought not the destruction of the existing order but its correction, its return to a lost and better version of itself. The Chartists sit squarely in this tradition. What they wanted was not new. The rights they demanded had a genealogy that stretched back through Thomas Paine to the Levellers to the barons at Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was sealed. Each generation of the English popular movement has had to rediscover that the constitutional ground gained by one era tends, mysteriously, to be lost by the next, that the establishment has an almost geological patience in the slow work of reclaiming power from the people who briefly forced it to concede. April 19th, 2026 | 22 comments
The central principle of the “Land Value Tax” which makes it different from normal Property Taxes, is that it would be the land only – so, for example, someone who kept land as a nature reserve, would pay the same tax as someone who built a factory on the land. In the United Kingdom, since 1929, farmland has not been subject to Property Tax (called “Rates” here – a form of taxation that goes all the way back to Tudor times, first introduced to fund the Poor Law – most of Scotland did not have such a system till 1845, France did not have Poor Law style benefits till well into the 20th century), farmers, if they owned the land, would have to pay the Land Value Tax – thus turning farmers into tenants of the state. Although, of course, much would depend on how high the tax is – what really matters about taxation is not the exact form of it, but how high it is. There is no such thing as a “good tax” – all taxation is harmful, but how harmful taxation will be is determined by how heavy the burden of taxation is. For example, property taxes in Alabama do much less harm than property taxes in New Jersey – but this is NOT because property taxes are structured fundamentally differently in New Jersey than they are in Alabama – it is just that they are much HIGHER in New Jersey, and, therefore, do more harm. That is why, for example, the present obsession of the Tax Foundation with the exact way taxes are designed, rather than with the overall burden of taxation in American States (there has not been a State and Local Tax Burden report from the Tax Foundation since April 9th 2022) and European countries, is so disheartening – the Tax Foundation seems to have lost its way and is no longer really doing what it was created to do. That discussion with supporters of the Land Value Tax is pointless can be seen from the Wikipedia article on the matter – the article is almost entirely a “puff piece” (any real criticism is quickly edited out – so much for “anyone can edit”) of both the Land Value Tax and the economic (the false economics of David Ricardo and others), philosophical, and even theological, theories behind it. In the West one example of the theological thinking behind the Land Value Tax is the idea, to be found in John Locke and others, that God gave the world to humanity in-common and that, therefore, private ownership has to be justified – either by “as much and as good left for others” or by some form of financial payment (to be collected by the state – for some reason). Logically a supporter of the idea should be against population increase, for example against immigration, as the more people who came into an area – the more landless people there will be, so the less money each landless person would get (in various benefits and services) from the Land Value Tax. Henry George reflected this – with his opposition to people going to California, even opposing the building of railways as this would make it less difficult for people to go to California. Even the “Christian Socialist” John Rawls (once very popular in academia) seems to have rejected the idea of a world tax – holding that American taxes should go to Americans in terms of welfare state programs – of course if one “imports the Third World” (the policy of many in the Democratic Party since 1965 – especially during the Biden Administration of 2021 to 2025) then government spending does go on the poor of the world – as they have come to the nation (the same is true in Britain and other nations). Claims, by the CATO Institute and others, that Third World immigrants are “net taxpayers” (that they provide more in taxes than they take in benefits and services) are false. Ideologically motivated deceptions. For those people who reject the theological basis of the Land Value Tax (and its real basis is theological, see above, rather than in the false economics of David Ricardo and others), the matter is of little interest – if one holds, with Hugo Grotius and others, that God did NOT give all land to humanity in-common – then no “justification” of private ownership is needed, either by “as much and as good left for others” or by some form of financial payment. April 19th, 2026 | 24 comments
Unfortunately for anyone committed to sticking it out for the next few years, Labour seem to have all but abandoned hope of hanging on to lingering British dynamism. OpenAI recently announced that it would abandon its UK Stargate data centre plans, citing the exorbitant costs of energy and the maddening bureaucratic maze that stands in the way of building anything in Britain. While their competitor, Anthropic, seems open to Starmer’s suggestions to scale up its London presence, this has less to do with British competitiveness and more to do with the American Department of War’s combativeness. Meanwhile, Skycutter, a domestic drone manufacturer, can’t seem to get a callback, and may now have to painfully decamp to America just to keep flying. As their operations director, Vince Gardner told the BBC, “We want to stay here, this is our home, this is where we’ve developed this technology. We don’t want to leave but the opportunities [in the US] are too great to turn down currently.” It’s not entirely obvious why, despite promised government support, the opportunities for a drone manufacturer would be on the other side of the Atlantic from Ukraine, unless, as Gardner says, any promised support simply seems slower than moving an entire company out of the country. April 18th, 2026 | 5 comments
The reason the Conservative Party is dying, is that they have come to believe that their task is to run the Socialist State more efficiently than Labour. April 16th, 2026 | 51 comments
Yes, but what do you do about it? Here are some possibilities: 1. Tell them not to. But how are you going to know if they are complying? A Reform government is not going to have the personnel it can trust to do this. 2. Make them fully independent. End grants, abolish student loans. You could even remove their Royal Charters. There’s going to be a hell of a backlash. But if you can get through that they should get back to education again. 3. Make university education less attractive. I’ve heard it said that people need degrees because IQ tests are illegal. Is that true? 4. Declare all universities “indoctrination centres” and remove all funding until proved otherwise. If they bleat about “independence” then you can say they’ve got what they wanted. The proof could be in the form of each member of academic staff being asked for their opinions on communism and DEI. Could produce some interesting results. … @Patrick Crozier Of course we have that technology, it is called the internet. For the most part (outside of some specific professions) universities provide students with four things: an education (Which is now no longer relevant since you can learn anything 1% of the cost by other means), a certification, which surely we can legally circumvent by setting up a skills based certification system (though see below), networking opportunities which only really matter at very high end and lower end universities — the majority in the middle do not provide value here, and a fourth, letting the kids PARTY. Presumably kids can have a really good time elsewhere too. The certification is the big issue, but surely there are other ways to prove one’s skills? Certainly in my area of expertise I’d rather have someone as a Certified AWS architect than a poncey degree from Harvard. That is a cultural change though, and I think it is coming. But in truth AI and robotics is going to largely eliminate jobs in this middle part anyway. I say let them die their natural death. One easy fix? Eliminate student loans and payments and let students bear the full cost of their education while keeping the government out of the “student loan” business. That’d shake things up PDQ. As I said there are exceptions, people with highly specialized training like Medical doctors and lawyers. April 15th, 2026 | 14 comments
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